Nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Film, İlker Çatak’s gripping high school drama shows an idealistic young math teacher (the extraordinary Leonie Benesch) seeking to rectify what she reads as a miscarriage of justice, only to make matters unfathomably worse. New to her school, Ms Nowak is reluctantly drawn into the interrogation of two grade 6 class representatives after a series of thefts. They cast suspicion on a Turkish classmate, Ali, despite his proclamation of innocence even after a search turns up a surprisingly fat wallet. Convinced racism is at play, the teacher decides to set up a sting operation to uncover the true culprit.
An ethics master class, the film vividly returns us to the everyday anguish of normal school life, when even seemingly the most straightforward problem can open up a minefield of mistrust and humiliation.
Taking on the uneasy complexity of a progressive modern society, and the friction produced when pluralism and an insistence on order and obedience collide, is a bold move, and The Teachers’ Lounge pulls it off with a sense of tension that makes the whole thing play like a thriller. There’s a level on which it’s darkly funny, especially if you’ve spent time around preteens. Every time Ms. Nowak thinks she has a solution, it goes sideways, in part because you cannot count on sixth-graders to just go along with suggestions from adults.
Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times
It’s not easy to make an intense thriller about things that happen every day. But when one appears, it’s glorious. The Teacher’s Lounge is glorious. It’s probably the best thriller of this type since Uncut Gems, another movie where just watching realistic characters making bad decisions was so nerve-wracking that it made you want to crawl under your seat.
Matt Zoller Seitz, rogerebert.com
A taut and tight examination of the concept of justice folded into an absorbing character study.
Carlos Aguilar, LA Times
İlker Çatak
Leonie Benesch, Micheal Klammer, Rafael Stachoviak, Anne-Kathrin Gummich, Eva Lobau
Germany
2023
In German with English subtitles
C.I.C.A.E. Award, Berlin 2023
Academy Award Nominee for Best International Film
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Producer
Ingo Fliess
Screenwriter
Ilker Catak, Johannes Duncker
Cinematography
Judith Kaufmann
Editor
Gesa Jager
Production Design
Zazie Knepper
Original Music
Marvin Miller
Also Playing
The Colour of Pomegranates + The House Is Black
This month's Pantheon screening is a double-bill, Sergei Parajanov's extraordinary evocation of the life and work of C18th Armenian poet Sayat Nova, and, The House is Black (22 min), the only film directed by the great Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad.
Left-Handed Girl
Co-written and edited by Sean Baker (Anora), Shi-Ching Tsou's heartwarming solo feature debut follows a single mom in Taipei who is too consumed with her noodle stand to keep tabs on her five-year-old daughter's burgeoning shoplifting habit.
The Librarians
Dispatches from the front line of America's culture wars (and ours too): librarians speak out about the war against ideas, history, freedom of expression and sexual identity, a campaign in which an open mind is the ultimate enemy.
Dawn Pemberton Sings Aretha + Amazing Grace Film Screening
These dates are going to knock your socks off: one of the all-time great concert films, Aretha Franklin performing at the New Bethel Baptist Church in 1972, and Canada's own Queen of Soul, Dawn Pemberton, performing live in Aretha's honour.